By Vladimir Popov (Former Soviet State Security Lieutenant Colonel)
June 24, 2020 Anno Domini
Translated from the Russian

Special services and doping

At the end of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, scandals erupted in connection with the accusation of Russian athletes in the use of various doping agents. The result of these scandals was the revocation of the accreditation of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) and the removal of Russian athletes from a number of international competitions. In addition to this, international sports organizations have decided to prevent Russian Paralympians from participating in the 2016 Paralympics in Brazil and 2018 in South Korea. Former sports minister Vitaly Mutko, who was promoted to the level of deputy prime minister of the Russian government in the wake of these scandals, had to respond to these accusations, which he did with ease, calling them deliberately false.

Vitaly Mutko was compelled to echo the honorary (and before that – the current) vice-president of the International Olympic Committee and the head of the Soviet National Olympic Committee Vitaly Smirnov, who stated that neither in the USSR nor in modern Russia there was and could not be a state program on the use of doping in sports. In fact, all these statements were outright lies, which both Mutko and Smirnov were well aware of.

Smirnov, before being elected to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in the early 1970s, served as Deputy Chairman of the USSR State Sports Committee. In 1978, he was recruited as an agent by the deputy head of the 5th KGB Directorate, Major General Ivan Pavlovich Abramov.

It was problematic to achieve high results in sports without doping. Here is the opinion of an authoritative person in the field of sports medicine, the former director of the Moscow Scientific and Practical Center for Sports Medicine (MNPTSSM), currently the chief specialist in sports medicine of the Moscow Department of Health, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Honored Doctor of Russia Zurab Givievich Ordzhonikidze:

“An average person spends about 2000 kilocalories a day to maintain life. An athlete is about six times more. This is enough to heat 12 tons of water at a temperature of 18 degrees Celsius by one degree. And this is a very serious task. Now – another frightening figure. The systolic (“upper”) pressure of a weightlifter at the moment of lifting the bar is approaching 380! And this is not the limit: it reached 450. And even if divided by three – already obvious hypertension! Therefore, of course, pharmacological support is needed. “

From an interview with MK.ru, June 22, 2016

Article 48 of the Olympic Charter is the medical code of the International Olympic Committee. It clearly spelled out the prohibition of the use of doping in sports. In addition, it notes that “doping is contrary to both medical ethics and medical science. The concept of doping is as follows: the use of substances belonging to prohibited classes of pharmacological drugs, and / or the use of various prohibited methods.”

German scientist, sports historian, Dr. Giselher Spitzer (Giselher Spitzer) in 2003 published a detailed study of the long-term use of various doping by athletes in the GDR in order to obtain high results. Spitzer’s work is called Doping in DDR. Using a large amount of factual material, including on the basis of declassified documents of the Ministry of State Security of the GDR, better known as the Stasi, the book described the state system for the introduction of various doping. In addition to medical institutions, intelligence of the GDR was involved in this system, secretly obtaining the corresponding drugs in Germany and other states.

At the same time, the leading medical specialists of the GDR, who developed programs for the use of doping agents in sports, were agents of the Stasi, that is, they were recruited by the Stasi for the purpose of total control over the development of these programs and their use in practice.

The study Doping in the GDR cites a report by Dr. Rudolf Müller entitled Proposal for the Organization of Medical Support for Leading Athletes and Olympic Team Candidates with West German Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Müller was simultaneously a Stasi agent under the pseudonym Ernst Lahe and from 1964 to 1969 he served as deputy chief physician of the sports medical service of the GDR. Also in the study, Dr. Spitzer mentions sports doctor Dr. Kipke (Stasi agent under the pseudonym “ Rolf ”) and sports officer Hans Gürtler. It was the tip of the iceberg, which opened only after the unification of the two Germany.

In 2000, the Berlin Criminal Court began to consider a criminal case against the former president of the German Sports Union of the GDR Manfred Ewald and his associate Manfred Heppner, who since 1974 led the special medical group “Sports Support”. Ewald was secretary of the German sports committee from 1948 to 1952, and from 1952 to 1960 – chairman of the State Committee for Physical Culture and Sports under the Council of Ministers of the GDR. For outstanding services to the fatherland, he was awarded the highest state award of the GDR – the Order of Karl Marx, to which an award of 20 thousand marks was attached.

From 1963 to 1988, Ewald led the East German sports movement. During this time, athletes from the GDR won 197 gold, 178 silver and 167 bronze medals at the Olympic Games. This was an unprecedented world achievement. The key to success was the training program for athletes in the GDR, which was a state secret. Therefore, during the existence of the GDR, sports functionaries and journalists of this country explained the high results by a special system for selecting talented children, a special system of education and training, demonstrating the advantages of socialism over capitalism.

In reality, the point was the massive use of doping agents not only in high-performance sports, but also in children’s sports schools. At the same time, no one was concerned about the study of the possible negative consequences of doping. No one informed either children or their parents about the use of doping in the process of sports training. Things were exactly the same in the Soviet Union. The goal, as in the GDR, was to promote the advantages of the socialist system over the capitalist one.

On April 23, 1951, the National Olympic Committee (NOC) was created in the USSR, which on May 7 of the same year at the 46th session of the International Olympic Committee was admitted to the membership of this international organization. The next year, 1952, Soviet athletes took part for the first time in the Summer Olympic Games, which were held in the capital of Finland, Helsinki. Despite the fact that it was a debut for the USSR national team, the team took second place in the number of medals won.

In the preparation of Soviet athletes for international competitions, anabolic steroids were actively used already in those years, which sharply increase the psychophysical indicators of athletes and determine high results in sports competitions. So the practice of using various doping agents was widely used in Soviet sports, but everything that was connected with this was classified as “secret.”

As part of the USSR Sports Committee (reorganized into the USSR State Committee for Sports in 1977), there was a department of medical and biological support for the USSR national teams in various sports. The employees of this department were sports doctors assigned to the respective national teams, whose functions were not limited to medical monitoring of the health status of athletes during the training process and competitions. In accordance with the instructions of the leadership of specific departments of the sports department, together with the coaches of the USSR national teams, the doctors attached to them carried out a wide program of pharmacological support for athletes. Basically, in this case, various groups of doping agents were used.

For each individual national team and individual athletes in individual sports, the department of medical and biological support of the USSR national teams developed a program for the use of doping agents and a method of concealing their use to avoid exposure during control during international competitions. Such programs were drawn up by sports departments together with the medical and biological department and approved by the deputy heads of the sports department in charge of the respective sports. All documentation was classified as “secret” and was kept in the first (security) department of the USSR Sports Committee.

Traditionally, sports doctors and masseurs of national teams were recruited by the KGB of the USSR to monitor the behavior of athletes during training camps and competitions held abroad, as well as to identify contacts with foreign athletes on the territory of the USSR. By the 1980 Moscow Olympics, all the doctors and masseurs of the combined teams of the Soviet Union were recruited by employees of the 11th department of the 5th department of the KGB of the USSR and the officers of the territorial state security bodies assigned to this unit. The author of these lines was during the described period the head of a group of officers who promptly supervised the USSR national teams in various sports and can responsibly declare that there is no exaggeration in the statement “all doctors and masseurs … were recruited”.

Here is what the leading researcher of the Scientific Research Institute of Sports of the Russian State University of Physical Culture, Sports, Youth and Tourism, Sergei Konstantinovich Sarsania, told about the practice of using doping drugs. Although it should be noted that it somewhat simplifies the practice of using doping drugs in the national teams of the USSR, believing that this happened on the initiative of the doctors of these teams. In reality, however, doctors were only executors of the prescriptions issued by the leaders of sports in the USSR.

“I tested this tendency at Dynamo. I say to Yurzinov (head coach of the Dynamo hockey team and second coach of the USSR national hockey team in the 1970-1980s. – Popov):“ Volodya, we have a series of six games. With CSKA Moscow, “Wings of the Soviets”, “Chemist” and others. Games in a row go, in two days, for the third. Let’s put the players on Nerobol at maintenance dosages. And they will have time to recover, and they will play meaner. But there are two options. Or tell the players what you are giving, explaining that the doses are absolutely harmless. If you want, I can tell. And the second option: you give it blindly, without knowing what kind of pills they are. “He says:” I cannot make such a decision. I have to ask the chairman of the central council of Dynamo. As if [Viktor] Tikhonov asked [Dmitry] Yazov if it was possible to give anabolic steroids to his own people. And I knew what they were giving. The team doctor, a former ski doctor (Boris Sapronenkov, who is also a state security agent Dedov – Popov), told me himself: “I mix it in a cocktail and give them a drink.”

From an interview by Sergei Sarsania to the author of the magazine “Iron World” Andrei Antonov. 2003 year

And this is how he talked about doping control:

“He was not in hockey then. And now they close their eyes. We held the World Championship in Moscow in 1978. Three weeks before the World Championship, we tested the USSR national team. Our coaches love to torture, but not create. I conduct biochemical blood control. The team is tortured. Two days later I was summoned to a closed meeting. The head of the football and hockey department Koloskov (state security agent Yantar – Popov), the head of the hockey department at our institute Korolev, our head of the biochemistry department Volkov, the senior coach of the national team Tikhonov is present. Koloskov asks me : “What to do?” I say: “The team is dead. The only thing that can save is anabolic steroids. The dosage is known to me. They will drink for 10 days, and everything will be fine. The only problem is doping control. But the world championship is in Moscow. “Koloskov says:” I take on this problem. ” nothing”.

From an interview by Sergei Sarsania to the author of the magazine “Iron World” Andrei Antonov. 2003 year

For the Olympics-80 in Moscow, an anti-doping center was created, equipped with the most modern equipment at that time and meeting high international standards. However, not a single case of the use of doping drugs by athletes from countries participating in the Olympic Games has been identified. What was the matter: the non-professional staff working in the anti-doping center, or the poor quality equipment of the center? Both the staff and the equipment were fine. It was about politics.

The Olympic Games, first held in a socialist country, were supposed to demonstrate to the whole world the alleged superiority of the socialist system over the capitalist one. The Central Committee of the CPSU took unprecedented measures to ensure victory at any cost. In accordance with secret resolutions of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, all government departments were obliged to provide all-round assistance to the USSR State Sports Committee in achieving this goal. So, for example, at the request of the leadership of the sports department, the Council of Ministers of the USSR by a secret resolution allocated significant foreign exchange funds for the so-called work with foreign judges or, simply put, for their bribery.

The KGB of the USSR also did not stand aside, which, in addition to the main task of ensuring security during the preparation and holding of the 1980 Olympics, was entrusted with the obligation to provide full assistance to the Soviet national team participating in the Games in achieving a convincing victory in the competition. To this end, the KGB agents from among Soviet judges with an international category and accredited to referee the Games of the Olympics in Moscow, as well as translators who worked with foreign judges, participants in competitions and foreign representatives of various services of the 1980 Olympics, were aimed at processing them in a profitable way for the Soviet Union. plan. Expensive gifts and foreign currency were used. The funds were spent from the budget of the KGB of the USSR and were registered under Article 9, which was used to encourage agents.

The leadership of the International Olympic Committee and the international federations accredited at the Moscow Olympics were under constant intelligence control, in addition to round-the-clock auditory control of their working and recreation areas.
In addition, two officers of the KGB of the USSR who had Olympic accreditation were introduced to the staff of the Moscow Anti-Doping Center. They were the senior operative of the 1st department of the 1st department of the 5th directorate of the KGB of the USSR, Major Boris Nikolayevich Pakin and his colleague, an employee of the same unit, operative captain Yevgeny Ivanovich Vorobyov. Both of them were representatives of the unit in charge of the USSR Ministry of Health and the country’s leading medical institutions. Since the accreditation department of the organizing committee of the 1980 Olympics consisted of more than 90% of state security officers working undercover, there were no problems with Olympic accreditation for the officers of the USSR KGB and their agents involved in servicing the games.

The task of the state security officers Pakin and Vorobyov, introduced into the anti-doping center, was to prevent the detection of the facts of the use of doping drugs by Soviet athletes. They were informed in advance about which samples needed to be replaced, and replaced them with their own urine or with the urine of their colleagues, who were invited to taste the scarce foreign beer that was available in abundance at the anti-doping center. Colleagues were not privy to the details of this operation, and the need for excrement in special containers was explained by strict accountability for the use of beer.

The results of the activities of Pakin and Vorobyov can be called impressive: not a single fact of the use of doping drugs by Soviet athletes was revealed. However, as well as foreign. This was done deliberately so as not to provoke reproaches from the heads of foreign sports delegations who participated in the Moscow Olympics, since if such facts were revealed in relation to foreign athletes, they could rightly be indignant, since they knew that athletes from many countries had sinned by using doping. And so – all have excellent indicators, especially since only those countries participated in the Olympiad that refused to boycott it because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Soviet athletes won 80 gold, 69 silver and 46 bronze medals that year. The second result, of course, was with the athletes of the GDR: 47 gold, 16 silver and 42 bronze medals.

The leaders of the Soviet state during its decline were generous with awards. All those who were direct participants in the 1980 Olympics were rewarded in various ways, including government awards. Major of State Security Pakin, who substituted urine samples at the Moscow Anti-Doping Center, was awarded the Order of the Red Star at the suggestion of his long-term friend, Deputy Head of the 11th Department of the 5th Directorate of the KGB of the USSR, Lieutenant Colonel Igor Perfiliev. According to their status, orders were awarded for bravery and heroism displayed during hostilities, and not for urine analysis in peacetime.

During the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, the Russian special services used the experience of Soviet colleagues and introduced an FSB officer into the anti-doping center, who was doing the same thing as his predecessor Pakin – he replaced the samples of Russian athletes that had traces of doping use, replacing them with clean ones. Thanks to these manipulations, just four years after the disastrous Winter Olympics for Russian athletes in Vancouver, Canada, at the regular Games in Sochi, the Russians achieved an impressive victory, taking first place in the team competition with 13 gold, 11 silver and nine bronze medals.

The statements of the leaders of Russian sports, echoed by the president of the country, about the absence in Russia of a state program for the use of doping drugs in sports, are nothing more than a lie, erected into state policy. On December 23, 2016, during his regular press conference, answering a question from a reporter of the Sovetsky Sport newspaper about the political component of claims against Russia by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), Putin said that “there is no state support for doping in Russia, and there are problems with doping in all countries. ”

According to Putin, the WADA investigation relied on the testimony of “informers who fled abroad.” “Now I don’t remember the name of this citizen, who ran away and who headed our Russian anti-doping agency,” Putin continued. “He was where he worked before? In Canada! to a high position, dragged here all sorts of nasty things. ” At the same time, Putin did not specify what kind of “muck” was “dragged” from Canada by Grigory Rodchenkov, who then fled from Russia (whose name Putin at that moment, they say, forgot, although he showed knowledge of various aspects of his biography).

In an interview with foreign media, Rodchenkov admitted that he was an agent of the FSB of Russia (which should not surprise us). Without a doubt, it was this department that prepared the certificate for Putin, where everything was set out in sufficient detail. So, Putin perfectly remembered the name of Rodchenkov.

Grigory Rodchenkov was born in 1958 in Moscow. In 1982 he graduated from the Faculty of Chemistry of the Lomonosov Moscow State University with a degree in chemical kinetics and catalysis. In 1985 he was hired by the Moscow Anti-Doping Center (ADC). In 2005, he became acting director of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise (FSUE) Anti-Doping Center, and from July 6, 2006 to November 11, 2015, he served as director of the FSUE Anti-Doping Center. After being forced to flee Russia in January 2016, finding himself in the United States, Rodchenkov admitted in one of his interviews that, as soon as he was appointed head of the Moscow ADC, he was recruited by Russian counterintelligence under the pseudonym Katz.

Soviet and Russian special services constantly monitored the use of doping agents in elite sports, since it was and remains a secret state program, and secrets must be protected from prying eyes.

Rodchenkov said:

” Our laboratory (as he calls the anti-doping center in Moscow – Popov) has collaborated with many similar foreign centers. In particular, there were close contacts with the laboratory of the GDR. Then the Soviet-American program started with scientists from Los Angeles. In [19] in the 90th year he defended his thesis. And soon after the departure of Uralts (the former head of the Moscow ADC – Popov) to the USA, I also left the Moscow laboratory, having worked in it for nine years. There was an idea to work in the USA. But wherever I was invited, I did not want, and where I wanted, they did not take me. But they hired the American firm Hewlett-Packard, which was the largest manufacturer of analytical equipment, to the Moscow office. Their devices were in all anti-doping centers in the world. But the 1998 banking crisis broke out. I went to Canada, where I worked for a year at an anti-doping center in Calgary. ”

From an interview with Grigory Rodchenkov for the moscowuniversityclub.com website, May 25, 2005

All this time, Rodchenkov was in the status of an agent of the FSB of Russia and therefore, in addition to his official activities, he obtained information in the interests of this department. In 2013, the Moscow ADC attracted public attention: the sister of the ADC head Grigory Rodchenkov, three-time world running champion Marina Rodchenkova, was found guilty under the article “illegal circulation of potent or poisonous substances for marketing purposes.” The court of first instance sentenced Rodchenkova to one and a half years in prison, but after the appeal, the term was replaced with a suspended sentence.

In December 2013, WADA recommended that the Moscow ADC be deprived of its accreditation “due to insufficient reliability.” On November 10, 2015, by a decision of WADA, the work of the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory was temporarily suspended, and Rodchenkov resigned from his post as head of the laboratory. The resignation was accepted by the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation, and on November 25 of the same year, Rodchenkov was temporarily removed from his post in the medical committee of the International Ski Federation. In the same month, WADA reported that the head of the Moscow anti-doping laboratory, Grigory Rodchenkov, destroyed 1,417 doping samples three days before the test.

In January 2016, Grigory Rodchenkov left Russia and went to the United States, where in May 2016 he made a sensational statement to The New York Times that it was he who helped Russia win the team event of the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi by developing an unprecedented doping scheme to achieve victorious results.

All published parts of Vladimir Popov’s book “The Conspiracy of Scoundrels. Notes of the Former KGB Lieutenant Colonel” can be found here.

By Vladimir Popov (Former Soviet State Security Lieutenant Colonel)
Sept. 16, 2020 Anno Domini
Translated from the Russian

One of the authors of the book “The KGB Plays Chess” and a former employee of the USSR State Security Committee, Vladimir Popov, recently completed work on his memoirs. In the book “The Conspiracy of Scoundrels. Notes of the Former KGB Lieutenant Colonel,” he talks about the formation of the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin, his associates, about his work in the committee and key events related to the Soviet special services. The book has not been published before. With the consent of the author, the GORDON edition exclusively publishes chapters from it. In this part, Popov writes about the participants in the “Tournament” operation, which the special services conducted in Canada, as well as how the KGB brought its agents “to a long settling” in Western countries to influence the Russian emigration:

Operation “Tournament”

In 1965, two years before the start of Expo 67, a young politician, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, appeared in the Canadian political arena, who would later be called the most prominent political figure in Canada in the past twentieth century. Becoming the head of the government of the country and leading it for 15 years, Trudeau in every way contributed to the rapprochement of Canada and the Soviet Union.

Trudeau received excellent education at the universities of Montreal, Harvard, Paris and the School of Economics in London. Education consisted in the study of law, economics and political science. Trudeau began his career as a lawyer and trade unionist for the province of Quebec. In 1951, he visited the Soviet Union, after which he came to the attention of the American FBI. In the press, he was called a “Canadian Castro”, a “radical socialist” and a supporter of the establishment of diplomatic relations with China.

In 1968, Trudeau took over the government of Canada. With his active support in 1969, a law was passed on the equality of the English and French languages. This law did not satisfy either the supporters of the sovereignty of Quebec, or the inhabitants of the English-speaking provinces of the country, split over the question of the independence of Quebec. In 1980, a referendum was organized by Quebec separatists to secede Quebec from Canada. The majority voted against. In 1995, another referendum was held in Canada on the recognition of the independence of Quebec, initiated by French-speaking separatists. Voting results: 50.5% against, 49.5% for.

Political instability in Quebec created favorable conditions for the work in Canada of the PGU of the KGB of the USSR, then the SVR of Russia. Trudeau was constantly in the field of vision of Soviet intelligence and was skillfully used by it.

Former member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, Alexander Yakovlev, who worked for several years in Canada as an ambassador, said in an interview that Trudeau was “the first Western politician who sympathized with Gorbachev”: “Mikhail Sergeevich came to Canada when I was an ambassador there. He amazed Canadian leaders with his free demeanor. Instead of one scheduled meeting with Trudeau, there were three.” It was Trudeau, after meetings with Gorbachev, who advised the leaders of other countries to pay attention to him.

In addition to Pitovranov and Bobkov, Anatoly Maksimov, an employee of the 1st Main Directorate, also arrived as part of the KGB operational group to the Expo-67 international trade and industrial exhibition. The cover for him was the Soviet foreign trade association Tekhimimport, in which a Soviet intelligence officer allegedly worked. In fact, Maksimov was an employee of the “T” (scientific and technical intelligence) department of the KGB PGU. It was he who was destined to become the main protagonist of the operational game with the Canadian special services, sanctioned at Expo 67 by the head of the KGB operational group Bobkov: Maximov was supposed to present himself to the American and Canadian special services as a potential defector. This game was codenamed “Tournament”.

The sports term for the operation was not chosen by chance. Traditionally, it is sport that opens the way to political dialogue between countries, and in the future cultural and economic ties are established and developed. Naturally, all international contacts do not pass without attention to them on the part of the special services. Sometimes, special services, in their own interests, initiate the establishment of contacts between states.

After the end of the international trade and industrial exhibition “Expo-67” in October 1967, the KGB decided to continue the operational game “Tournament” on the territory of the USSR.

In November of the same year, an international hockey tournament for the prize of the USSR Ice Hockey Federation was held in Moscow for the first time. The tournament was timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. In addition to the USSR hockey team, it was attended by the hockey teams of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Canada.

The assumptions that a Canadian intelligence officer would arrive as part of the Canada team to develop contacts with Maximov did not come true. No such person has been identified on the Canadian national ice hockey team. Because of this, we had to make hockey tournaments permanent.

In 1969, the USSR Ice Hockey Federation, signed by its chairman, the well-known test pilot Georgy Masolov, applied to the Izvestia newspaper with a request to organize an annual hockey tournament under the auspices of the editorial board. This is how the international hockey tournament for the prize of the Izvestia newspaper was born.

Izvestia was published by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. This status distinguished her from the strictly party-based Pravda and other party publications. That is why Izvestia was chosen by Soviet intelligence as a “roof” for the activities of intelligence agents accredited as journalists in various countries. However, in such government structures as TASS and APN, the percentage of intelligence officers working under journalistic cover was much higher.

Soviet intelligence officers Vadim Kassis and Leonid Kolosov worked in the editorial office of the Izvestia newspaper under the cover of journalists for a long time. To resolve urgent issues with the state security units in their offices, in violation of the secrecy regime and conspiracy rules, the devices of the KGB’s internal secret telephone line were installed. This communication line was called “OS” – operational communication. In addition to the KGB Central Office, this connection could be used to contact any state security unit on the territory of the Soviet Union.

During the struggle for the title of world chess champion between “renegade” and “defector” Viktor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov, the author of these lines, at the direction of the leadership of the 5th Directorate of the KGB of the USSR, together with the above authors, prepared a propaganda article aimed at discrediting Korchnoi. However, the article was declared unsuitable, and I had to write a new version together with my agent Semyon Grigorievich Bliznyuk, head of the international department of the Soviet Sport newspaper. It was published under the title “The Challenger’s Fake Move” and signed by Bliznyuk.

In addition to intelligence officers, the Izvestia editorial staff employed journalists who were attracted to cooperation with the USSR state security agencies as agents and proxies. The latter included an experienced journalist Boris Fedosov, who was a confidant of the 7th department of the VSU KGB of the USSR, which developed foreign journalists accredited in the USSR. It was he who became the main organizer of the popular hockey tournament for the prize of the Izvestia newspaper, which sports journalists began to call the small world championship.

After the next tournament Fedosov, who wrote about him under the pseudonym “Snowman” (his graphic image was chosen as the symbol of the tournament), wrote in the final article about the expediency of bringing novelty to international hockey competitions.

The publication was noticed at the Canadian Embassy in Moscow, and on the initiative of the second secretary of the embassy, ​​Gary Smis, consultation meetings were held with Fedosov and the head of the USSR Ice Hockey Federation Andrei Starovoitov.

The question of the possibility of friendly matches between hockey players of the Soviet Union and Canadian professional players was discussed. All spoke in favor: Chairman of the USSR State Sports Committee Sergei Pavlov, the department of agitation and propaganda of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the secretariat of the Central Committee of the party. Leonid Brezhnev, a big fan of hockey, reacted positively to the idea of ​​holding the competition.

On August 30, 1972, the USSR national team arrived in Canada to participate in the first competitions, which, with the light hand of sports journalists, were called “super series”. Among the organizers of the competition from the Canadian side were the head of the NHL (national hockey league) hockey union, Alan Eagleson, and his assistant Aggi Kukolovich, a Ukrainian by birth who spoke Russian. This gave the KGB reason to suspect them of involvement in the Canadian and American special services, and a little later, in the late 1970s, in relation to them, the 3rd department of the 11th department of the 5th department of the KGB of the USSR opened cases of operational collections, in which materials of their operational study were filed.

In each visit of Eglson and Kukolovich to the USSR, they were put under the control of the relevant state security services: in the rooms of the hotels they occupied, auditory control of the premises and telephone conversations was carried out. Their movements around the city were monitored by the surveillance service. In addition, the KGB agents of the USSR from among the employees of the protocol department of the USSR State Committee for Sports, headed by the long-term resident of the state security Mikhail Mzareulov, were focused on the study of Eglson and Kukolovich. Mzareulov was close with the chairman of this department, Sergei Pavlovich Pavlov. After the dismissal of the latter from office, which followed shortly after the end of the Moscow Olympics-80, followed by the dismissal of Mzareulov, who was replaced by Yuri Sharandin.

When he was the head of the protocol department, Mzareulov was also a resident of the KGB. He was recruited by Lieutenant Colonel Ernst Davnis, the deputy chief of the 2nd department of the 11th department of the 5th KGB directorate, already mentioned by us. As a resident of the KGB, Mzareulov, following the instructions of Davnis, supervised agents from among the employees of the protocol department, who worked as translators with representatives and members of foreign sports organizations, and employees of the hockey and football department, which was headed by Vyacheslav Koloskov (an agent of the Yantar KGB).

No operatively significant data was received regarding Eagleson and Kukolovich. They could only be suspected of financial manipulation when receiving payment for advertising placed on the sides of the Ice Sports Palace in Luzhniki during the Izvestia prize tournament. There were also good reasons to suspect a number of senior officials of the USSR Goskomsport of committing illegal financial transactions with Iglson and Kukolovich. However, the information obtained by operational means was not implemented by the 5th Directorate of the KGB of the USSR.

As time has shown, the suspicions about Eagleson were not unfounded. For fraud in the organization of hockey matches for the Canadian Cup, in which the USSR national team also participated, as well as for fraud with funds from the NHL pension fund, he was sentenced in December 1997 by a Toronto court to 18 months in prison and was deprived of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest award …

On September 20, 1972, the national team of Canadian professionals arrived in Moscow on a return visit to continue the “super series”. In addition to Eagleson and Kukolovich, a certain Peter Stefan arrived as part of the team, whom the KGB considered a representative of Canadian intelligence.

The “Tournament” game continued, and the “potential defector” (Soviet intelligence officer) Maksimov was notified in advance of Stefan’s arrival. Stefan called Maksimov several times using local public telephones (for two kopecks). But the leadership of Soviet intelligence at that moment considered it inappropriate to establish contact between Maksimov and Stephen in Moscow.

On October 3, 1972, the indefinite Soviet-American Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense (ABM) Systems entered into force. It was important for the Soviet leadership to preserve the possibility of dialogue with the political leaders of the United States (Canada and the United States were considered as a single whole). The actions of the KGB could complicate relations with the Canadian leadership. Therefore, Operation Tournament was temporarily suspended. Temporarily – because it lasted 11 years.

The longer such games last, the more likely it is to fail, since it is extremely difficult to maintain the initial line-up of the game over a number of years. Life makes its own adjustments. Members move through the service, retire. Changes in the political situation in the world will certainly take place, which may negatively affect the continuation of the operational game and its results.

Operation “Tournament” did not end with anything significant (if you do not mean the Soviet-Canadian hockey matches). But the affairs of the generals who participated in the Expo-67 exhibition took off. Pitovranov became a particularly trusted person of Andropov, Boris Semenovich Ivanov was appointed First Deputy Chief of the 1st Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR.
Why was Operation Tournament carried out and why were the generals who participated in it promoted?

In 1999, the publishing house “Geya Iterum” published a book by Anatoly Maksimov, a former officer of the Soviet scientific and technical intelligence of the PGU KGB of the USSR, entitled “Operation Tournament. Notes of an Intelligence Laborer.” The title itself contained a fair amount of the author’s slyness. During his service at PSU, Maksimov constantly traveled abroad on long and short-term business trips. And not to Africa, Bangladesh or Kampuchea. He worked in Europe, USA and Canada. In the impoverished Soviet years, living and working there was the cherished dream of many of Maksimov’s colleagues. Who, in reality, could be attributed to the number of unskilled workers of the intelligence, is the various technical personnel, whose work was invisible, but it was impossible to do without it.

Today everyone knows the name of Vasily Mitrokhin, until recently – an obscure archivist, whom various print media call the head of the KGB archive, some the head of the Soviet foreign intelligence archive. In fact, he was one of the many employees of the 15th department of the PGU of the KGB of the USSR, which was the archival intelligence unit. The labor of its employees, as well as representatives of other technical services of the intelligence unit, can be conditionally called the labor of unskilled intelligence workers. The scouts themselves, of course, and by right, considered themselves to be the elite of their department – the KGB.

In the book written by Maximov, the text of which, of course, was passed on by the hand of an editor unknown to us from the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) of Russia, the author deliberately confusedly told about the operational game “Tournament”. He did not clarify the situation in his extensive interview, which was published on June 30, 2000, on the pages of Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Again, some torn apart facts and a lack of logic in the presentation.

Maksimov proudly writes about the infiltration into the intelligence network of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the US CIA, but traces of this infiltration are completely invisible from his confused narrative. Yes, a number of high-ranking Canadian intelligence officers were fired. But this was the result of a provocation by Soviet intelligence, which exposed his officer Maksimov to the opposing secret service as a potential defector. However, this is not at all a “penetration” into the agents’ apparatus of hostile intelligence.

As an example, we can cite the now known fact of cooperation of the head of the Soviet counterintelligence department of the CIA, Aldrich Ames, with the help of which 10 so-called moles were calculated – Soviet intelligence officers recruited by the US CIA.

Speaking at one of the meetings of the leadership of the Central Office of the KGB of the USSR, in the summer of 1985, the head of the PGU of the KGB of the USSR, Vladimir Kryuchkov, spoke with pride about the outstanding result achieved by Soviet intelligence. Naturally, no details were given, but in the sense of what was said it was clear that there was an acquisition of a most valuable agent in one of the leading intelligence services in the world.

Or take, for example, the case of Robert Hansen, the former head of the Soviet department of the US FBI, thanks to whose information the Soviet foreign intelligence officers recruited by the CIA were also identified. This is precisely the main purpose of the undercover penetration into the intelligence apparatus of the counteracting intelligence – to obtain information about the “moles” and information about the enemy’s plans. None of this was received during Operation Tournament. And most importantly, beyond the confusing narrative, the question remained whether the Canadian and American special services developed Maksimov as an intelligence officer or as a businessman. Maksimov avoided answering this reasonable question, hiding behind a description of his endless demands on the Canadian intelligence officers who worked with him.

The purpose of this strange operation was to divert the attention of Canada’s counterintelligence from the acting in the leadership of the RCMP and not a calculated agent of the “K” (external counterintelligence) command and control unit of the KGB of the USSR. In the mid-1990s, a very authoritative person, former head of the “K” department, who was directly related to Operation Tournament, General Oleg Kalugin, spoke about this agent in an interview with the Canadian and American press.
In all likelihood, Maksimov in this operational game was used by the native Soviet intelligence “in the dark”: he, of course, did not know about the presence of a Soviet agent in the RCMP. And the development of Maksimov by the Canadians, which ended with his recruitment (which did not happen) could have contributed to the occupation of an even higher post by the Soviet agent who was part of the leadership of the RCMP.

Since Maksimov was not an employee of the “K” department, he was not privy to all the details of this case.

In March 1978, Literaturnaya Gazeta published documents and the text of a letter from the Canadian authorities with guarantees for Maksimov in case of his escape. “Literaturnaya Gazeta” was supervised by the 2nd department of the 1st department of the 5th KGB directorate, led by General Bobkov, who, with the authorization of whom, was the authorization of Maximov’s “setup” to the Canadian special services. The article was written by longtime KGB agent Arkady Sakhnin. The article was placed in the newspaper by the first deputy editor-in-chief Vitaly Syrokomsky, another KGB agent and confidant of the deputy head of the 5th KGB department, General Ivan Abramov.

The desire to protect the Soviet agent – an employee of the KKKP from exposure, even after many years, was the real reason for the appearance of Maksimov’s book, which is strange in content. Thus, Kalugin’s statements about the agent in the leadership of the KKKP were disavowed, about whom, by the way, Maksimov did not say a word, although at the time his book appeared it was no longer a secret.

As for Bobkov, he performed another operation at the Expo-67 exhibition. One of the married officers of the task force, which he led, during his stay in Montreal, struck up an affair with a Soviet citizen who was temporarily at the exhibition. In such cases, an immediate secondment of a state security officer to the USSR followed and subsequent punishment, up to and including dismissal from service.

In this case, the chosen one of the KGB officer was the daughter of the deputy chairman of the KGB, Colonel-General Georgy Tsinev, Brezhnev’s confidant. Neither the dispatch of the officer to his homeland, nor his punishment followed. The case ended in a divorce and a new marriage of the offender, and the appointment to a general’s post in the KGB representation in the GDR. And Philip Bobkov was appointed head of the new 5th Directorate of the KGB of the USSR.

The return of the prodigal son: the People’s Labor Union and Mikhail Nazarov

Carrying out work to counteract foreign Russian emigre centers and organizations, the KGB made extensive use of undercover penetration into them in order to neutralize their activities as much as possible. A typical example in this regard is the activities of Mikhail Nazarov, a long-term agent of the KGB of the USSR, who for many years tried to promote the unification of the ROC and ROCOR and at the same time was used in the development of the People’s Labor Union (NTS), carried out by officers of the 10th department of the 5th directorate KGB of the USSR.

Mikhail Nazarov (Pakhomov) was born in 1948 in the city of Makeevka. In 1967 he graduated from the technical school, in 1975 – from the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages ​​named after Maurice Torez. During the training period, he was recruited by the 5th department of the USSR KGB for the city of Moscow and the Moscow region for counterintelligence studies of foreign and Soviet students of this university, since the Maurice Torez Moscow State Pedagogical Institute was used by the Soviet special services as a recruiting base for the acquisition of agents from among foreigners and Soviet citizens from their subsequent withdrawal to the West in order to be used in the interests of the USSR special services.

For many years in this university, a very remarkable woman worked as a teacher, and then as the head of the department, whose family history is the history of the Soviet special services: Zoya Vasilyevna Zarubina, whom we have already mentioned. In addition to the official positions that she held at the Zarubin Institute, she was a long-term resident of the KGB of the USSR and, in this capacity, supervised agents from among the teaching staff of the university.

By the way, her daughter, Tatyana Kozlova, in the 1970s collaborated with the Department of International Sports Relations of the State Committee for Sports of the USSR as an interpreter, was recruited by the operative officer of the 1st Department of the 1st Department of the 5th Directorate of the USSR KGB Captain Vladimir Lavrov, after which she traveled many times abroad to international competitions as part of the USSR national teams as an interpreter.

Nazarov also went abroad as an interpreter. In 1975 he was sent to Algeria to build a metallurgical plant. About the history of his appointment, he himself wrote that after graduating from the institute, he refused the proposed assignment to the KGB system and went to work in Algeria, and from Algeria, “due to the conflict with the KGB (refused to cooperate), he illegally moved to Germany to receive a philosophical education “.

He writes vaguely and falsely about how Nazarov and his wife and child “moved to Germany”:
The reason for my departure to the West (with my wife and son) was not so much the conflict with the” guards “(because of my acquaintances with foreigners and because of the escape of a colleague); and not only the pressure of the KGB, which insistently demanded cooperation, which I I could not go (having taken from me the required subscription on “assistance to the authorities” before leaving, they actually predetermined the break that occurred in the future).

Thus, he seems to admit the fact of recruitment by the Soviet state security organs, and at the same time denies cooperation with them.

In Germany, Nazarov joined the NTS, worked as executive secretary of the NTS Posev magazine, actively collaborated with the ROCOR, was a delegate from its German diocese at the All-Diaspora Congresses of Russian Youth in 1979 in Toronto, in 1981 in San Francisco, in 1990 in Montreal, where he made a presentation. In 1994 he returned to Russia. Soon he was elected secretary of the nationalist Union of Russian Writers (not to be confused with the liberal Union of Russian Writers), was a member of the leadership of the Russian Christian sovereign movement (headed by Viktor Aksyuchits), the “Derzhava” movement (led by Alexander Rutskoi), was a board member of the Union of the Russian People (headed by Vyacheslav Klykov), then the chairman of the Moscow department of the Union of the Russian people, vice-chairman of the Supreme Monarchist Council of the Russian emigration, and so on … In 1996 he founded the publishing house “Russian Idea”.

According to Nazarov, his grandfather, a white officer, and great-grandfather, a priest, were shot by the Bolsheviks in 1920. But it is surprising that with such personal data, immediately after graduating from the institute, he managed to go on a business trip abroad. The so-called special check, carried out by the Soviet state security bodies in relation to citizens of the USSR, who were registered for going on business trips or for frequent business abroad, was divided into two types. For those traveling to the countries of the socialist community, with the exception of Yugoslavia, China and Vietnam, the questionnaires were required to indicate the closest relatives – parents, spouses and children. When registering for all other countries, it was necessary to indicate the personal data of the parents of the fathers and mothers of those being registered.

At all times of the existence of the Soviet state security bodies, there were registration units in their composition. In the period preceding the creation of the KGB, they were called accounting and archival. In the KGB of the USSR, these units received the serial number 10 – 10th department. On the ground, respectively, there were 10th divisions. In these divisions there was a card file for agents of the state security agencies, both active and archival, and a record of all current and archival affairs that were conducted by the state security agencies from the moment of their inception. In addition, during the special check, a check was carried out on a mandatory basis by the GNITSUI (Main Research Center for Management and Information) of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, which also kept records of all cases in the production of internal affairs units, as well as archival cases, in the entire history of the USSR.

With such a thorough check-up procedure, it was almost impossible to hide information about the repressed relatives. And since the archives contained files on the repressed, in which there was always a mandatory questionnaire of the arrested person with an indication of all his close and distant relatives, those who tried to hide information about the repressed relatives were always easily distinguished. Accordingly, they were refused to travel abroad. Refusal was also received by those who honestly indicated data on repressions against their relatives, since it was believed that due to resentment against the Soviet regime they were unreliable.

Going on a business trip abroad was the cherished dream of all Soviet citizens without exception, if only because the person posted abroad received double wages – in the host country and in the USSR. This made it possible for a good amount of money during a business trip. Therefore, potential business travelers stood in a kind of queue.

A young specialist or a newly recruited person, as a rule, had to work for at least two years before his candidacy was considered for registration in a foreign business trip. There was also a clear procedure for obtaining a party or Komsomol characteristics for a person being drawn up, which could be approved according to the established rule if the status was on the party or Komsomol account for at least a year.

Nazarov did not fall under any of the listed criteria. More precisely, he fell under everything in the sense that he could not be sent on a business trip to Algeria as an interpreter at the end of the institute, and from there, without stopping to flee to Germany with his wife and child, allegedly because of a conflict with the KGB.

In this regard, it is necessary to give some more explanations. The recruitment of state security agents is not an instant act – “saw and recruited.” This process is lengthy, including many months of studying and obtaining characterizing data from other agents in relation to the person of interest. From among those who were in the conditional queue for traveling abroad, persons were selected who could be used abroad in the interests of the Soviet state security organs. Those of them who agreed to tacit cooperation with the KGB, naturally, received preferences – they were among the first to leave.

In the conditions abroad, the recruitment of Soviet citizens was carried out extremely rarely, only in exceptional cases. This was difficult for a number of reasons, ranging from the need to request the Center to obtain the necessary information, which could take months, to the risk of leakage of information about the KGB’s recruiting activities in foreign conditions. So, they would not have carried out a recruiting approach to Nazarov in Algeria. Everything was different.

On April 28, 2006, Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article “Soviet intelligence officers served even in the land of polar bears” about Colonel Boris Grigoriev, who specialized in the Scandinavian countries for more than 30 years: “He served in illegal intelligence … In 1959 … Moscow Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages ​​named after Maurice Torez. The newly minted student did not even suspect that he was in a real forge of personnel for the KGB at, one might say, the preparatory department. ”

There are two inaccuracies in the above quote. The institute was named after the French communist in 1964. It is wrong to define an institution as a source of personnel for the KGB. In fact, the institute selected candidates from among the graduates for service in the Soviet, then in the Russian, special services: the KGB-FSB and the GRU.

Since the establishment of the institute in 1930, the department of military training was formed in it. From 1946 to 1998, the department trained specialists in English, German and French military translation. Graduates of this department were also trained to conduct psychological warfare against a political and military enemy, in order to weaken his moral and military potential. Over 100 graduates of the military department were awarded orders and medals of the USSR and the Russian Federation. It is clear that government awards are not awarded for translations from foreign languages ​​… And Zarubina was not only teaching foreign languages ​​at the foreign language. Her main occupation was the selection of people suitable for work in the Soviet special services.

In Nazarov’s case, there was a typical withdrawal of an agent abroad for a “long settling” (in the terminology of the Soviet and Russian special services) or as a “sleeping agent” (in the terminology of Western intelligence services). The Western definition seems to me to be less precise. The agent does not “sleep” at all. He is actively being introduced into a new life and seeks to take a place in it, which can be most effectively used in his activity as an agent.

In Germany, Nazarov becomes a member of the NTS – this is how this political organization began to be called since 1943. Its predecessor was the Union of Russian National Youth, which by 1929 united anti-Soviet youth organizations in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Holland and France. Soon, at the second congress of the Union, its name was changed to the National Union of a New Generation (NSNP). Since the inception of the Union, its goal has been the struggle to overthrow Soviet power in Russia and create a “corporate state” on its territory (later this term was replaced by “solidarism”).

Throughout its history, the Soviet state security authorities waged an irreconcilable war with the “Union”. Dozens of members of the NSNP died while trying to penetrate the territory of the USSR. The Soviet special services, in turn, actively sent agents to the NSNP and NTS.

In the 1950s, the Soviet state security organized the assassination of Alexander Trushnovich, a representative of the NTS in Berlin, kidnapped active members of the NTS Valery Tremmel in Linz and Sergei Popov in Thuringia, attempted to assassinate the leaders of the NTS Georgy Okolovich and Vladimir Poremsky, which ended in failure, thanks to the transition to the side of the NTS the captain of the USSR Ministry of State Security Nikolai Khokhlov, who was sent to commit these murders, and the voluntary surrender to the German authorities of his partner, the agent of the USSR Ministry of State Security, German Wolfgang Wildprett. All these operations were carried out under the leadership of General Yevgeny Pitovranov, who from 1953 to 1957 headed the apparatus of the KGB commissioner under the Ministry of State Security of the GDR.

Since the creation in 1967 of the 5th KGB Directorate under the USSR Council of Ministers, the 10th Department was formed within it, which was entrusted with the development of foreign anti-Soviet centers. Subdivisions of the Soviet foreign intelligence (PGU KGB of the USSR) were also involved in this activity. Among the main projects under development were NTS and its printed organs – the magazines Posev and Grani and the newspaper Za Rossii.

It was important for the officers of the 10th department to know the names of emissaries sent to the USSR, to identify channels for the illegal delivery of anti-Soviet literature, to detect the NTS cells operating on the territory of the Soviet Union, as well as to obtain proactive information about the NTS propaganda plans and the names of Soviet authors who had intentions to cooperate with this anti-Soviet center. To this end, as well as to introduce a split in the leadership of the organization and complicate its activities, active steps were taken to introduce Soviet agents into the NTS.

At the end of 1956, the Grani magazine issued an appeal to the representatives of the creative intelligentsia of the USSR to publish abroad works rejected by the Soviet authorities. In the Soviet years, the works of many well-known authors living in the USSR and emigrants were published in the publications of the NTS and the publishing house NTS “Posev”.

A young member of the NTS, Mikhail Nazarov, rather quickly took the place of the executive secretary of the Posev magazine. The executive secretary of the editorial office is the main coordinator of all departments and services in any publishing house, who selects materials for publications. Having your own person in such a place, of course, was a success for the developers of the NTS.

By definition, Nazarov could not have been an agent of the GRU, the military intelligence of the Soviet General Staff. Military intelligence officers and their agents are finding out the military secrets of a potential enemy. Unlike the KGB, which was interested in the political potential of the enemy countries and anti-Soviet organizations fighting the Soviet regime. The occupation of Mikhail Nazarov during the period of his life abroad clearly indicates that he could not but be in the field of view of the officers-developers of the 10th department of the 5th department of the KGB of the USSR, who directed his activities.

Since 1989, Nazarov began to publish in the Soviet Union. His first publications were in Literary Russia, Russky Vestnik, Moscow, Our Contemporary … The Soviet Union has not yet collapsed, the KGB is still in power, and Nazarov, a member of the NTS and executive secretary of its main political body published in “Literaturnaya Rossiya”, the organ of the Writers’ Union of the Russian Federation.

In 1989, the 5th department of the KGB of the USSR was reorganized into the department for the protection of the constitutional order – department “Z”. However, only the signboard has changed. Operational tasks and means of their solution remained the same. In accordance with them, the editorial office of the Literaturnaya Rossiya newspaper and the Writers’ Union of the RSFSR continued to be supervised by the 8th department of the Z administration, and the Union of Russian Writers was headed by a longtime agent of the Soviet state security bodies, Sergei Mikhalkov.

Without the knowledge and approval of the KGB, the publication of Nazarov’s materials in 1989 in the Soviet Union was impossible. The Deputy Chairman of the KGB of the USSR and the curator of the department “Z” was Bobkov’s promoted young Major General Valery Lebedev, the deputy head of the department “Z” and the curator of the 8th department was Colonel Igor Perfiliev, the head of the 8th department of the 5th department of the KGB was Colonel Andrey Blagovidov (distinguished himself during the development of the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn). With the help of their invisible support, Nazarov began his return to Russia in another troubled period of its history.

Brother Nazarov (Pakhomov) – Sergei Viktorovich Pakhomov – in the book “The Secret of Mikhail Nazarov” could not get around the issue of Nazarov’s cooperation with the KGB:

“There were vague rumors about Nazarov that he was a KGB agent … Nazarov told me personally about his relations with this organization … Misha accepted the KGB’s offer of cooperation in order to be guaranteed to leave, worked a little as an informer among the institute’s unreliable youth and ended up with others Soviet specialists to Algeria … The reason for his escape is simply ridiculous. He violated the regime by going without permission on an excursion outside the village of Soviet specialists, which was categorically forbidden. For such indiscipline, according to the rules for Soviet specialists, he was supposed to he was not returned, he fled to Western Europe. “

Nazarov never told how he managed to get from North Africa to the center of Europe, to Germany. From his very brief descriptions of his escape, he ran spontaneously. But you need entry visas to travel through a number of countries, even transit ones. We need money. Without the help of the KGB, Nazarov could not have reached Germany.

Directed by curators from the 10th department of the 5th department of the KGB of the USSR, Nazarov was actively introduced into the ROCOR. Traditionally, the operational units of the special services cooperate in their activities. If one of the agents has the ability to work, for example, in the interests not only of his (10th) department, which developed foreign anti-Soviet centers, but can join the work on the ROCA, which was developed by the 4th department of the 5th KGB department, then the agent connected to the work of the 4th department. This is how Nazarov worked, and rather quickly managed to become a noticeable figure abroad, and then in Russia, where his specialty was the intersection of Orthodoxy and nationalism.

The previous part was published on September 9th. The next one will be released on September 23rd.

All published parts of Vladimir Popov’s book “The Conspiracy of Scoundrels. Notes of the Former KGB Lieutenant Colonel” can be read here.

Those who have even casually studied the 9/11 conspiracy are well aware of Israeli foreknowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

An honest researcher would see that Israel was not only aware ahead of time but intimately involved. Israel appears to have orchestrated the attacks through its terrorist arm Mossad, with help from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the Bush Administration, and other lower-level conspirators.

There are various stories of of certain persons and organizations being tipped off about the attacks, even warned not to be around Lower Manhattan that day. If you haven’t learned about them, there are dozens and dozens of research articles on the matter. Some of the most suspicious warnings came from Israeli instant messaging service Odigo (Comverse Technology) as well as usury king Goldman Sachs.

The New York Rangers—a professional hockey club within the Zionist-controlled pro sports racket National Hockey League, headed by Jew Gary Bettman—appears to be one such organization that was tipped off.

The Rangers were scheduled to begin their training camp for the 2001-2002 season early in September that year. The team, booked at the Marriott Hotel in the World Trade Center complex, were to report for physical examinations at Madison Square Garden on Sept. 11, after which the on-ice portion of camp was to begin.
However, two weeks before camp, the plans were changed and the team was relocated to a boutique hotel about two miles from the WTC. This information was disclosed by former Ranger Theoren Fleury in his autobiography Playing With Fire, which, incidentally, is about how Fleury was sexually abused by agents of the Zionist sports racket. In it, Fleury describes how, at only 14 years old, he was forced onto the NHL casting couch by a pederast coach in exchange for a fast track to the big league.

After the Team Canada mini-camp in Calgary, I left for the Rangers training camp in New York. We were scheduled to stay at the Marriott Hotel at the World Trade Center, next to the Twin Towers. We were to report for physicals at Madison Square Garden on September 11. Camp would begin the next day, with the public invited. We never practiced at the Garden, but Slats wanted to get us pumped up for the season. He was really happy to see me in the kind of shape I was in.
…
Two weeks before camp, plans changed and the team moved our reservations to a boutique hotel a couple of miles from the Twin Towers, closer to the Garden. I was rooming with Sandy McCarthy and we fell asleep watching TV the night of September 10. We woke up just as NBC was showing the first plane crashing into the South Tower. I assumed it was a movie, but the next thing I knew, Katie Couric came on. (Pg. 232)

Now this may just be a coincidence, but it’s slightly suspicious considering all the other reports of warnings to others to avoid the area on Sept. 11. And it seems likely that the conspirators would tip off a pro sports organization that would be under threat. After all, pro sports is central to the weapon of mass distraction used by the Judeo-Masonic cryptocracy to keep the masses under control. The conspirators couldn’t afford to lose an entire team of hockey superstars (the Rangers were stacked with some of the best in the entire league) as well as coaching personnel. So, the powers that be made sure their little investment was well protected and the boys were relocated.

In order that the masses themselves may not guess what they are about, we further distract them with amusements, games, pastimes, passions, people’s palaces …. Soon we shall begin through the press to propose competitions in art, in sport in all kinds: these interests will finally distract their minds from questions in which we should find ourselves compelled to oppose them.
—Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion 13:3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD_vwzjdTi4